Saumya Gupta | Midnight Lovers / 2022

hidden affections

by Douglas Messerli

 

Saumya Gupta (screenwriter and director) Midnight Lovers / 2022 [16 minutes]

 

Rahul (Shawn Gupta) is busy packing while speaking on the phone with his mother. The next morning, he is off to the airport to London where he is planning to live. It’s clearly a trying time for him, and what’s more, his two best school friends, Aditya and Abeer (Saalim Siddiqi and Abhishek Blossom) who were supposed to show up earlier in the day to help, have not yet arrived.

     Finally, Aditya arrives with a lame excuse that his car broke down, and Abeer follows shortly after. They insist he party with them—Rahul plans to stay up all night in any event—but he is miffed by their lack of concern. But finally, sitting him down on the couch, and basically tickling him, they force him to forget his temporary woes, bring out the beer, and celebrate, even if it is a slightly sad occasion.

     At first they talk for a while about Aditya’s upcoming marriage to a woman in the near future, and Rahul mentions that Abeer will also soon be moving away, back to Bangalore, in Southern India. Although Adeer wants to see a photo of Aditya’s girl, he refuses, since Adeer has a long tradition of mocking every girl’s appearance.

   The three young men return to their games, but I wouldn’t be surprised, since it’s Rahul’s very last night in India that they share a little of the pent-up sexual energy that they’ve been withholding from one another all these years, although the film closes up with the final kiss between Rahul and Aditya.

     In a strange surprise, he tells Aditya not to marry the girl he planning to, since he too had an affair with her several years ago, but they continue to communicate on the What’sApp even today.

When Aditya refuses to believe him, he pulls out his cellphone and calls her, she responding quite enthusiastically to his call. Aditya disappears for a moment, the other’s afraid of the effect of Abeer’s news. But he quickly returns laughing, thanking Aditya for helping him to break off with her, something he’s been attempting to do for some time. He doesn’t really want to get married. And Abeer insists it’s just not in the cards for him.

   The bottle spins again, this time pointing at Aditya. Again, he at first balks at the need to tell the truth about something he’s clearly not ready to, but he finally blurts it out. He’s bisexual, interested in both girls and boys. Knowing now that there is not a girl in his life, they ask who’s the lucky boy, to which he responds, he’s here in the room. For a long while now he has been in love with the handsome Adeer and now asks for a kiss, which with just a little prodding Adeer seems almost too happy to award him.

      But now Rahul gets up and leaves the room, retreating to the bathroom in tears. At first the two others imagine that the shock of Adeer being bisexual might have upset him, and they go looking for him, trying to get him to open up and talk. Inside, we see Rahul in tears, trying to get a hold on himself, but breaking down again and again.

     Finally, he unlocks the door, and, after some urging admits why he has grown so emotional. He has been for many years now in love with Aditya, but now finds out that Aditya has loved only Adeer. Startled by the news, Aditya hugs and kisses Rahul, as Adeer momentarily retreats

   The three young men return to their games, but I wouldn’t be surprised, since it’s Rahul’s very last night in India that they share a little of the pent-up sexual energy that they’ve been withholding from one another all these years, although the film closes up with the final kiss between Rahul and Aditya.

     This is a charming film with no great profundity, and a lot of questions remaining. For example, why have these three handsome friends wait so very long to reveal their love for one another, although even in the first moments when they meet up they are most definitely hands on when it comes to each other’s bodies. And, if they wanted to share their love, why wait until the very last moment when two of them are soon leaving?

     But those are the questions of a critic, not a simple viewer of the film, who can simply sit back and enjoy the fact that the trio have simultaneously come out to one another.

 

Los Angeles, August 10, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2023).